The Declaration of Independence — Plain English
The greatest political document ever written deserves to be read
Why This Version?
The Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest political documents ever written.
It is also one of the least read.
Most Americans recognize a few famous lines, but relatively few have ever followed Jefferson’s argument from beginning to end. The eighteenth-century language can make one of history’s clearest cases for liberty seem more difficult than it really is.
That is a shame.
Every American deserves to understand one of the greatest arguments for self-government ever written.
What follows is not a replacement for the Declaration of Independence. The original remains unmatched.
Instead, think of this as a translation into modern English—one that preserves Jefferson’s logic, his structure, and his extraordinary argument while making it easier for today’s reader to hear his voice.
Read this version first.
Then read the original that follows.
Jefferson deserves that.
So do we.
The Declaration of Independence — Plain English
Translated into Modern English by Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
July 4, 2026
Sometimes a people reach the point where they can no longer live under the government that rules them.
When that happens, they owe the world an explanation.
This is ours.
We begin with a truth that should be obvious.
Every human being is created equal.
Every person is endowed by our Creator with rights that no government can give and no government may rightly take away.
Among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Government exists for one reason:
To protect those rights.
Its authority comes only from the consent of the governed.
When government fulfills that duty, it deserves our support.
When it consistently violates that duty, it loses its legitimacy.
The people then have the right to change it—or abolish it—and establish a government more likely to protect their freedom and secure their future.
No wise people do this lightly.
Long-established governments should not be overthrown over temporary disagreements or minor grievances.
History teaches that people will endure much before risking revolution.
They will tolerate inconvenience.
They will tolerate hardship.
They will even tolerate injustice.
But there comes a point when abuses are no longer isolated.
They become a pattern.
Power no longer serves the people.
The people exist only to serve power.
That is tyranny.
And a free people have both the right and the duty to end it.
That is the condition of these American Colonies.
We did not rush to this decision.
We petitioned.
We appealed.
We warned.
We asked only for the rights that belong to free Englishmen.
Each appeal was answered with further injury.
The facts speak for themselves.
The King refused laws necessary for the public good.
He prevented colonial governments from acting when action was urgently needed.
He dissolved representative assemblies whenever they resisted him.
He denied the people meaningful representation.
He obstructed justice.
He made judges dependent upon his own will.
He created new offices and new officials to harass the people.
He maintained standing armies in times of peace without our consent.
He placed military power above civilian authority.
He cut off our trade.
He imposed taxes without our consent.
He denied us the protection of trial by jury.
He suspended our own legislatures and claimed unlimited power over us.
He declared war against his own subjects.
He burned our towns.
He destroyed our property.
He hired foreign soldiers to wage war against us.
He encouraged violence within our own borders.
These are not isolated mistakes.
They are not misunderstandings.
They are the deliberate acts of a ruler determined to establish absolute power.
Such a ruler is unfit to govern a free people.
Nor can the people of Britain claim ignorance.
We warned them.
We appealed to our common history, our common heritage, and our shared sense of justice.
They chose not to listen.
We are therefore left with only one course.
We declare that these Colonies are, and by right ought to be, Free and Independent States.
Our allegiance to the British Crown is ended.
Every political bond between us and Great Britain is dissolved.
As free and independent states, we claim the same rights possessed by every sovereign nation: to make peace, wage war when necessary, form alliances, establish commerce, and govern ourselves.
This is not a decision without cost.
We know what we risk.
Some will lose their fortunes.
Some will lose their homes.
Some will lose their lives.
Yet there are principles worth more than comfort, safety, or even life itself.
Freedom is one of them.
With firm reliance upon Divine Providence, we pledge to one another our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
The Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;
and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The Declaration of Independence cannot be improved upon.
That was never the goal.
The goal was to make one of history’s greatest political documents more accessible to modern readers without changing its meaning.
Something unexpected happened while I worked through Jefferson’s words sentence by sentence.
When I finished, I realized that I understood the Declaration far more deeply than when I began.
Not because I had changed Jefferson’s ideas.
Because I had finally followed his argument from beginning to end.
The Declaration is often remembered for a handful of famous lines. But Jefferson was doing much more than writing stirring prose. He was building a careful, logical case for independence—one step leading naturally to the next.
Working through that reasoning made me appreciate the document in a way I never had before.
If this modern rendering helps even a few readers experience that same realization, then it has accomplished exactly what it was intended to do.
Thanks. I will. And a hamburger.